Tips and Tricks: Hiring on a Budget

If you’ve ever touched the recruiting process, you’re well aware that hiring can be expensive! However, you probably also know that making a bad hire is even more expensive. According to Forbes, a bad hire can costs an employer “thousands of dollars”. So what are the best ways to hire with different levels of budget? We’ve helped compile some top tips and tricks for those hiring on any budget.

Under $50

If you only have $50 to spend on hiring you’re largely limited to free options which is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes it takes going back to the basics to get someone’s attention. For example, start with printing or buying a help wanted sign and putting it in the window of your business. The best employees are often customers of your business since they already understand what your business does and are obviously willing to support it. You’ll also want to consider posting help wanted flyers on bulletin boards around town. Once you’ve posted your ad physically, you should turn to social media and post it on your company and personal pages. Encourage your employees to share it since they often have friends and a large network who might be looking for new jobs.

Then of course, there are the online options. Place your job ad on some of the free online job boards. There are thousands of these boards so pick three or four that best fit your target audience, create an ad, and consider it ready-to-go. Here is a quick list of free job boards to help you get started.

$51 – $100

So now you have a some money to spend on finding a perfect employee, congratulations! You should still start by doing everything in the under $50 budget because it will maximize your results without taking up any of your current budget. The next step is to start looking at paid options to promote your ad. Although you can’t quite afford some of the more expensive job boards like Monster, you should be able to create job postings on a number of sites such as Indeed, Craigslist and more. Because you can only afford one posting, it is important to optimize that posting as much as possible. A simple Google search on “How to Optimize a Job Posting” can help you take your strategy a step further and increase your chances of getting results from a job listing.

$101-$1000

As stated before, you should definitely start by doing everything in the budget categories listed above. Fortunately, you now have a fairly decent sized budget to post job ads. You can now afford to post to some of the more expensive job board options such as Glassdoor, Monster, Careerbuilder, etc. or you can create multiple ads on some of the cheaper job boards I already mentioned. Your best bet is to test both options – you never know what works well until you start measuring. If an inexpensive Craigslist ad is working well for you, post a few of them. If not, consider posting to some new job boards. Every business and audience is different, and prefers different job posting channels. The extra budget will give you the flexibility to get insights and take your hiring to the next level with more strategic thinking.

$1000+

If your budget is hitting in the thousands, then you’re given the opportunity to heavily invest in hiring top talent and that will pay off big time. At this level of budget you have much more flexibility as far as advertising your job opening. In addition to the previous budget levels, you can look at hiring more specialized recruiters that focus on specific industries and job types. Consider hiring someone to write great job ads for you – the right job ad copy can dramatically impact the amount of applicants that come through. To prevent wasting your budget however, you’ll want to test different options to see what works. Start by looking into paid packages on job board platforms that provide you more features to help distribute and measure your job postings for maximum performance and impact.

The next time you’re recruiting with a new budget, consider our top tips and tricks. With today’s competitive job market, it’s important to recruit smarter in order to bring in a strong job candidate pool and hire the right person for your company.

About the AuthorWill Zimmerman is a content marketer for Proven, the small business hiring tool. He is from Boulder, Colorado, and when he’s not writing awesome content, he enjoys all things outdoors including, but certainly not limited to, skiing, camping, hiking, and surfing.

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